Close the Hearse Curtains, Please!

A record that was recently brought to my attention by blog follower Melody Loves Books, here for your enjoyment is the utterly mad May 1968 single Requiem (For a Girl Born of the Wrong Times).

 

Requiem (For a Girl Born of the Wrong Times) was recorded by singer Betty Barnes, who had previously issued a couple of hillbilly singles in the mid-50s for TNT. After a decade-long break – during which time she turned her hand to songwriting – she reappeared in the late 1960s, recording first for RCA and then Kapp. Barnes’s best-known single is the Northern Soul classic Walking Down Broadway, but I cannot imagine anyone dancing to Requiem (For a Girl Born of the Wrong Times) at a Wigan all-niter. A Betty Barnes issued a single in 1962 on Bodway, but I’m not sure if this is the same singer.

 

Composed by songsmiths Lor Crane & Bernice Ross, the flip side was simply an instrumental version of the plug track, with our Betty’s voice wiped: the demo copy features the same song on both sides. Ms Ross, who scored top ten hits in 1964 with the Danny Williams single White on White, and in 1965 with Don’t Just Stand There for Patty Duke, also wrote a Spanish version of the lyrics, but I’ve yet to track down a recording of that version.

 

The lyrics that Ms Ross came up with for the English version are simply astounding: ‘Dig that crazy caddy! She never rode in one of them before, it’s even got curtains in the back door…’ The Cadillac with the curtains is, of course, a hearse, and the girl being transported by the same vehicle is on her way to her own funeral. This odd little disc doesn’t quite know what it wants to be: it begins from the point of view of someone watching the hearse drive past, but by the end of the song (if you can call this wretched piece of musical excrement a song) the girl narrating the story is clearly doing so from inside the box.

 

Kapp clearly realised fairly quickly that they’d picked a wrong ‘un: Betty’s follow-up, Destiny’s Child, was issued in July and plugged mercilessly as her debut for the label. The powers that be at the company obviously wanted to forget that this particular slice of bad taste existed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in 2006 the track turned up on the Ace Records compilation Dead! The Grim Reaper's Greatest Hits.

 

Brilliantly creepy and completely mad, Requiem (For a Girl Born of the Wrong Times) was not a hit, and does not appear to have been issued outside of the USA and Canada. But here it is now, just for you.

 

Enjoy!

 

Download Requiem HERE